Okay here goes, sound off on all the funny rumours or true stories you know or have heard about st-architects' bad behaviour. Here's two I've heard, both concerning de nederlanse architect rem koolhaas. I should emphasize that both of these are just rumours.... tee hee.
1. at the opening of Prada's LA store, alledgedly mr. (dr. ?) koolhaas became upset about the security staff preventing some architecture fans from entering the store and threw some chairs around to get the attention of those in charge.
2. at an airport, allegedly koolhaas saw a man in the lounge who was in a panic because he had lost his passport. as the story goes, koolhaas managed to spot the guy's passport and decided it would be kind of funny to chuck it behind a plant so the guy wouldn't find it for a while longer and remain in a state of panic.
As bad as this may be, my rumour is of the Dr. K himself as well. One of my former bosses at another Dutch firm (office in London) used to fly back and forth from London to Rotterdam often. Many of these trips included flights near the famous Remmy. It is said that Kdogg would sit down in his seat on the plane and set a stack full of magazines in the seat next to him. These were purchased at the airport and would end up on the airplane floor. Koolhaas would spend the 1.5 hour, if that, flight to Rotterdam or London, scanning magazines for "inspirational images" and would tear out the ones he liked, he would then throw the magazines on the floor and would leave them there when he exited the plane. The stack of images would then be placed on the desk of the interns and told to "design this" or some other mythologically phrased commandment.
I don't know how accurate all of my info in the rumour is, but it's close.
there is the oft-repeated (or not) story about eisenman that his interns have to print out 8x11s and tape them together if they want to do a check plot
and supposedly they have to buy their own pencils and pens
but then again, how many stories are there about non-starchitects who are also assholes?
someone once had a story (which i don't know if it's true or not) that lord norman foster once fired an intern who caught him canoodling with someone not his wife -- but like i said, norman, i don't know if it's true or not
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME ....
Stanford White, 1853-1906: (McKim Mead and White)
Stanford White had his dark side and it was darker than most. He led a double life under the very eyes of his adoring wife, Bessie, who chose not to see but could not fail to suffer from her husband’s incessant debauchery. White’s scandalous “parties,†known for their over-sexed, scantily-clad maidens and bubbling French champagne, were often memorialized on the front pages of the tabloids of the day. He was an extrovert, a lavish entertainer with a penchant for young, beautiful women. On the second floor of his tower apartment at Madison Square Garden a red velvet swing dangled from the gold-leaf ceiling, often occupied by the nubile and willing body of one of his countless girls.
One such occupant of the notorious red swing was a seventeen year old red-headed beauty from a small town in Pennsylvania named Evelyn Nesbit. At sixteen, she had posed for the famous Charles Dana Gibson. At seventeen, she worked as a chorus girl in the Floradora review where she caught the roving eye of Stanford White who soon made her his mistress.
According to Nesbit’s own testimony, their affair started one evening at White’s apartment when he slipped “something†into her champagne. When she awoke on his satin bedcovers a few hours later, he informed her that “now she was his.†Despite this lecherous start, their affair lasted for quite a while and White took good financial care of both Miss Nesbit and her mother. But Stanford White eventually grew bored of his conquest and moved on to more nubile territory. They parted amicably and Nesbit married Henry “Harry†Kendall Thaw, the multi-millionaire heir to a railroad and ore fortune from Pittsburgh.
Thaw vowed to get even with the man who “spoiled†his wife. His deadly rage consumed him and finally erupted at the supper club theater on the roof of Madison Square Garden on the night of June 25, 1906. Concealing a pistol under a heavy overcoat, Thaw followed Stanford White to the opening of the musical review of Mam’zelle Champagne. He approached his table and fired three shots at close range into his face and head. White slumped to the floor, dead. Ironically, he died in a building that he himself had designed just a few years earlier.
one of my faves is one meeting when philip johnson was presenting a project in houston, high-rise or something. there was PJ and all the peons standing in a row behind him. one of the clients noticed something they really hated. PJ turns around and yells, "which one of you drew that?" the offender stupidly raised his hand and was apparently fired on the spot.
of course there's that whole MOVIE 'bout louis kahn...
and frank lloyd wright used to make his peons at taliesin west eat fried eggs for dinner while he and his wife and daughter ate steak on a podium overlooking the drafting floor
wow, cool. did ap say something that had to be censored?
back in the late 80s, will alsop came to our school as a visiting critic. the school set him up in a room in the basement of the school - his painting studio during the time while he was there. i never saw any evidence that he interacted with students, but there was lots of evidence that he spent a lot of the time shiny-eyed drunk and got a lot of paint all over every surface of that room.
we also had a visit from herzog & demeuron, also as 'visiting critics'. they made it clear upon arrival that they had no intention of talking to students if they could help it (though they did end up on at least one review, to their dismay). they really were just there to 'show our work'. and to hit on some of the guys and trade t-shirts, gathering new specimens for their collections.
jesse reiser and nanako umemoto were just plain bitchy, though they did lead an interesting project. though she was much quieter, she seemed to have a better handle on architecture and teaching. he was just a pain-in-the-a** diva.
ironically, despite locking us in a small room with him while he chain smoked, leb woods was one of the most useful and best behaved of our visitors during that time.
on sept 11 2001 the entire chicago loop emptied itself onto any bus or train going outward. by somewhere around 11 the only people downtown were the cops and helmut jahn, who sent round an e-mail to his (absent) workers saying something like "sorry for all the horrible tragedy but we have important projects to do so get back to work"
i knew a guy at SOM whose s.o. worked at murphy jahn
i don't know if it counts as bad behavior because it was part of their schtick for so long: getting any of the new york five together on a panel usually degenerated into a (decidedly non-architectural) argument.
that is, unless you also put izenour (r.i.p.) on that panel. saw this once: eisenman and gwathmey teamed up on him. shameless.
i think i read somewhere that thom mayne went out to a job site one time, and wanted some concrete work redone, but the contractor wouldn't do it, so thom went and rented a jackhammer and tore it down himself so it would have to be redone.
The Ando story is still the best, Only because the toughest looking trades I' ve ever seen always tend to be concrete guys who are big enough to burn diesel. Its a nice image to think of a small Japanese man taking out the tough talking / walking trade guy.
defending your concrete doesn't count as bad behaviour. these idiot contractors need to recognize (!) thom mayne is a hero for destroying that bad work
Maybe not an starchitect, but recently mentioned in this forum as an important (or not) architectural author, J. Bloomer, was teaching a course and moved 2,000 miles away during the middle of the semester and didn't tell anyone.
We kept having class without her, ran it on our own, for another month or so till someone told us she wasn't coming back. Then she handed out grades at the end of the semester. Everyone got an A except two people got a B, for absolutely no reason. It was a crappy, worthless class (experimental turned bad) and she knew it, it was the only class she had that semester, why stick around?
Someone i once worked with once worked with Hadid, and used to work at a computer right next to her for nine months, and not once during the first three months did she reply or respond to anything he asked/said to her.
I've also heard stories about her throwing computer monitors to the floor and the like.
well i had heard Rem's car is full of porn magazines, but not the "normal" ones... the "funky" ones, fat ppl, midgets, child porn, etc.... as weird at this sound, some good friend of mine who worked there for the Berlin exhibition and content publication commented me that, and she's the nicest person and actually have no hard feelings or anything to complain about Dr. K.....
Ando was a boxer before he was an architect. He's also a gruff Japanese man from Osaka, which makes him a tough guy in the first place. I wouldn't fuck with him.
and norm the foster allegedly had some product designers who worked for him make a bespoke chest of draws to contain every pair of sunglasses.
not exactly naughty, but a little eccentric
i just saw a movie about Paul Rudolph...it was filmed at the time that he was building the chapel at Emory in Atlanta...it showed a site visit where he was presenting his design for the altar and some other "furniture"...his design called for ovular shapes to match the vaults of the rest of the building...the building committee/client decided that they wanted to have a rectangular altar...then Rudolph storms off walking around the 2nd floor of the chapel with cameraman in tow...after a diatribe about the merits of his design he lets rip with a very childish and whiny "well maybe they should just be the architect then!!!"
mmhhh i thought we architects where able to find our way to bathrooms always...i dunno is something i suppose u will know where they will put it.... i dunno was Zaha asking u for the way to the bathroom or to take ur place in the bathroom line??? ;-)
When Jacques Herzog was teaching here at Cornell in the 80s, he would go to bars around ithaca, get totally shitty and get into fights on a rather regular basis. In fact, he's been banned-for-life from most local bars here.
don't know if these were starchitects, or if this is "bad behavior," but SOM partners bruce graham (sears tower, inland steel) and walter netsch (air force academy, uic, inland steel) disliked each other so much that they maintained separate offices -- in separate buildings -- across the street from each other (walt apparently got inland steel, bruce was in 33 west monroe). supposedly they still haven't said two words to each other for more than 40 years
architectural author James Steele plays mind games with his thesis students... always the half-assed complement, also is the wishy washy sort to boot. But the big one about him is that his wife divorced him for cheating on her with his students (!), and took him for everything he had, including all his previous book royalties. Now when he assigns his own books for a class he even jokes, "It's not like I'm getting anything for it".
Also apparently Kate Diamond had a REALLY hard time fitting in with the other kiddies in high school, and even switched high schools several times because of it. This came out in a crit of a high school project in which the school had to be broken down into small learning communities (LASD's new fad regulation) and she really went off about what a terrible environment that would be for people like her. All the students just kind of stood there with raised eyebrows thinking, "hmm, a bit too personal, that."
we can always make up stories abou teachers we had that we hate actually...i mean, theres no way to confirm any of this stories that the ppl is sharing (and i didnt insinuated Zaha was a man, just thought of the bathrooms at the AA studio buildings which normally are mixed)
i like collect these stories because they bolster my philosophy that the only difference between the stars and the "lesser lights" of similar experience and talent is hubris and self-promotion
there was a long-standing rumor at UT that michael benedikt single-handedly caused the extinction of a rare species of south african tree by specifying it in one of his houses in florida, but i actually really liked him when i had him...and he didn't "practice" anyway, so the story is a bit farfetched, now, isn't it?
As the story goes, one of my professors attended Cranbrook and the alustrious Danny Libeskind was sitting in as a juror...
My professor was presenting his project and after he had been speaking for like 5 min or something, Libeskind interrupts him, walks toward his presentation materials and removes them from the wall and places his drawings on the floor.
Libeskind then walks back to his chair, sits down and utters a few words under his breath and then, with much bravado says "Your work is Shit"...
My professor, enraged, proceeds pin his materials back up and Libeskind attemps to prevent him from doing so...
Here is where the story get's a bit dodgey: Word on the street is that my professor punches Libeskind and then accidentially cuts his in a large paper cutter moments after he decked Libeskind....
What is confirmed however, is that charges were filed that day against my professor and the Bloomfield Hills police were called.....
If there are any Cranbrook alum's out there from the late 70's through early 80's who could comment on this, I'd love to get the details...
Or, if anyone else has bitch slapped this guy, I'd like to know about it.
Mariano- yeah, I guess we all could. But my two examples would be confirmed if you know the right people. And if you don't believe some of the stories here, consider them rumors. Whatever floats your boat.
famous stARCHITECTS' bad behavior stories
Okay here goes, sound off on all the funny rumours or true stories you know or have heard about st-architects' bad behaviour. Here's two I've heard, both concerning de nederlanse architect rem koolhaas. I should emphasize that both of these are just rumours.... tee hee.
1. at the opening of Prada's LA store, alledgedly mr. (dr. ?) koolhaas became upset about the security staff preventing some architecture fans from entering the store and threw some chairs around to get the attention of those in charge.
2. at an airport, allegedly koolhaas saw a man in the lounge who was in a panic because he had lost his passport. as the story goes, koolhaas managed to spot the guy's passport and decided it would be kind of funny to chuck it behind a plant so the guy wouldn't find it for a while longer and remain in a state of panic.
As bad as this may be, my rumour is of the Dr. K himself as well. One of my former bosses at another Dutch firm (office in London) used to fly back and forth from London to Rotterdam often. Many of these trips included flights near the famous Remmy. It is said that Kdogg would sit down in his seat on the plane and set a stack full of magazines in the seat next to him. These were purchased at the airport and would end up on the airplane floor. Koolhaas would spend the 1.5 hour, if that, flight to Rotterdam or London, scanning magazines for "inspirational images" and would tear out the ones he liked, he would then throw the magazines on the floor and would leave them there when he exited the plane. The stack of images would then be placed on the desk of the interns and told to "design this" or some other mythologically phrased commandment.
I don't know how accurate all of my info in the rumour is, but it's close.
isnt formotion that VW all wheel drive system?
eh pah
why is it that most starchitects are assholes???
come on everyone... stories.... no chit chat....
John, pop my ball.
Story:
I heard that once Rem wanted to change his last name to Job [in ode to the Jewish religion]
geez, where do you start?
there is the oft-repeated (or not) story about eisenman that his interns have to print out 8x11s and tape them together if they want to do a check plot
and supposedly they have to buy their own pencils and pens
but then again, how many stories are there about non-starchitects who are also assholes?
with evidence Im impressed AP
someone once had a story (which i don't know if it's true or not) that lord norman foster once fired an intern who caught him canoodling with someone not his wife -- but like i said, norman, i don't know if it's true or not
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME ....
Stanford White, 1853-1906: (McKim Mead and White)
Stanford White had his dark side and it was darker than most. He led a double life under the very eyes of his adoring wife, Bessie, who chose not to see but could not fail to suffer from her husband’s incessant debauchery. White’s scandalous “parties,†known for their over-sexed, scantily-clad maidens and bubbling French champagne, were often memorialized on the front pages of the tabloids of the day. He was an extrovert, a lavish entertainer with a penchant for young, beautiful women. On the second floor of his tower apartment at Madison Square Garden a red velvet swing dangled from the gold-leaf ceiling, often occupied by the nubile and willing body of one of his countless girls.
One such occupant of the notorious red swing was a seventeen year old red-headed beauty from a small town in Pennsylvania named Evelyn Nesbit. At sixteen, she had posed for the famous Charles Dana Gibson. At seventeen, she worked as a chorus girl in the Floradora review where she caught the roving eye of Stanford White who soon made her his mistress.
According to Nesbit’s own testimony, their affair started one evening at White’s apartment when he slipped “something†into her champagne. When she awoke on his satin bedcovers a few hours later, he informed her that “now she was his.†Despite this lecherous start, their affair lasted for quite a while and White took good financial care of both Miss Nesbit and her mother. But Stanford White eventually grew bored of his conquest and moved on to more nubile territory. They parted amicably and Nesbit married Henry “Harry†Kendall Thaw, the multi-millionaire heir to a railroad and ore fortune from Pittsburgh.
Thaw vowed to get even with the man who “spoiled†his wife. His deadly rage consumed him and finally erupted at the supper club theater on the roof of Madison Square Garden on the night of June 25, 1906. Concealing a pistol under a heavy overcoat, Thaw followed Stanford White to the opening of the musical review of Mam’zelle Champagne. He approached his table and fired three shots at close range into his face and head. White slumped to the floor, dead. Ironically, he died in a building that he himself had designed just a few years earlier.
i saw that on "history detectives"!
one of my faves is one meeting when philip johnson was presenting a project in houston, high-rise or something. there was PJ and all the peons standing in a row behind him. one of the clients noticed something they really hated. PJ turns around and yells, "which one of you drew that?" the offender stupidly raised his hand and was apparently fired on the spot.
of course there's that whole MOVIE 'bout louis kahn...
and frank lloyd wright used to make his peons at taliesin west eat fried eggs for dinner while he and his wife and daughter ate steak on a podium overlooking the drafting floor
damn.
did my other post, about Pei, disappear?
i tried to click on the link but was denied
So, there is an archinect private....
I hear Winka and Rem got it on.
Also heard that when an architect who will remain unnamed went to pick Zaha up at the airport, she broke the seat in the car.
yes, diabase, there's an "archinect private" and AP should check his email.
wow, cool. did ap say something that had to be censored?
back in the late 80s, will alsop came to our school as a visiting critic. the school set him up in a room in the basement of the school - his painting studio during the time while he was there. i never saw any evidence that he interacted with students, but there was lots of evidence that he spent a lot of the time shiny-eyed drunk and got a lot of paint all over every surface of that room.
we also had a visit from herzog & demeuron, also as 'visiting critics'. they made it clear upon arrival that they had no intention of talking to students if they could help it (though they did end up on at least one review, to their dismay). they really were just there to 'show our work'. and to hit on some of the guys and trade t-shirts, gathering new specimens for their collections.
jesse reiser and nanako umemoto were just plain bitchy, though they did lead an interesting project. though she was much quieter, she seemed to have a better handle on architecture and teaching. he was just a pain-in-the-a** diva.
ironically, despite locking us in a small room with him while he chain smoked, leb woods was one of the most useful and best behaved of our visitors during that time.
on sept 11 2001 the entire chicago loop emptied itself onto any bus or train going outward. by somewhere around 11 the only people downtown were the cops and helmut jahn, who sent round an e-mail to his (absent) workers saying something like "sorry for all the horrible tragedy but we have important projects to do so get back to work"
i knew a guy at SOM whose s.o. worked at murphy jahn
they won the AIA firm of the year award recently
murphy jahn, that is
well, so did som, in 1996
Paul: understand, understood.
i don't know if it counts as bad behavior because it was part of their schtick for so long: getting any of the new york five together on a panel usually degenerated into a (decidedly non-architectural) argument.
that is, unless you also put izenour (r.i.p.) on that panel. saw this once: eisenman and gwathmey teamed up on him. shameless.
i think i read somewhere that thom mayne went out to a job site one time, and wanted some concrete work redone, but the contractor wouldn't do it, so thom went and rented a jackhammer and tore it down himself so it would have to be redone.
we've all heard about tadao and his right cross when peoples throw ciggies in his concrete
he must not have read or seen the fountainhead: dynamite, a la howard roark, would have been easier.
you look cooler with a jack hammer, though. maybe he DID see the fountainhead and he was trying to be like gary cooper in the quarry.
The Ando story is still the best, Only because the toughest looking trades I' ve ever seen always tend to be concrete guys who are big enough to burn diesel. Its a nice image to think of a small Japanese man taking out the tough talking / walking trade guy.
defending your concrete doesn't count as bad behaviour. these idiot contractors need to recognize (!) thom mayne is a hero for destroying that bad work
ken yeang (semi-starchitect) coughed, phlem and all, right in my face. didn't try to cover his mouth or apologize either. totally oblivious.
Maybe not an starchitect, but recently mentioned in this forum as an important (or not) architectural author, J. Bloomer, was teaching a course and moved 2,000 miles away during the middle of the semester and didn't tell anyone.
We kept having class without her, ran it on our own, for another month or so till someone told us she wasn't coming back. Then she handed out grades at the end of the semester. Everyone got an A except two people got a B, for absolutely no reason. It was a crappy, worthless class (experimental turned bad) and she knew it, it was the only class she had that semester, why stick around?
Someone i once worked with once worked with Hadid, and used to work at a computer right next to her for nine months, and not once during the first three months did she reply or respond to anything he asked/said to her.
I've also heard stories about her throwing computer monitors to the floor and the like.
well i had heard Rem's car is full of porn magazines, but not the "normal" ones... the "funky" ones, fat ppl, midgets, child porn, etc.... as weird at this sound, some good friend of mine who worked there for the Berlin exhibition and content publication commented me that, and she's the nicest person and actually have no hard feelings or anything to complain about Dr. K.....
Ando was a boxer before he was an architect. He's also a gruff Japanese man from Osaka, which makes him a tough guy in the first place. I wouldn't fuck with him.
zaha once asked me the way to the toilet.
at least she does actually speak.
I hope you didn't tell her! Uppity b*tch!
actually i had no idea who she was at the time- so i was pretty patronising.
no dudes. zaha keeps it real for the common man with $70,000 fancy tables. how can you call that uppity ?
and norm the foster allegedly had some product designers who worked for him make a bespoke chest of draws to contain every pair of sunglasses.
not exactly naughty, but a little eccentric
i just saw a movie about Paul Rudolph...it was filmed at the time that he was building the chapel at Emory in Atlanta...it showed a site visit where he was presenting his design for the altar and some other "furniture"...his design called for ovular shapes to match the vaults of the rest of the building...the building committee/client decided that they wanted to have a rectangular altar...then Rudolph storms off walking around the 2nd floor of the chapel with cameraman in tow...after a diatribe about the merits of his design he lets rip with a very childish and whiny "well maybe they should just be the architect then!!!"
mmhhh i thought we architects where able to find our way to bathrooms always...i dunno is something i suppose u will know where they will put it.... i dunno was Zaha asking u for the way to the bathroom or to take ur place in the bathroom line??? ;-)
is someone insinuating that ms. hadid is actually a man ? that's mean.
semi-starchitect rails against equal treatment:
http://www.archrecord.com/news/daily/archives/051108ce.asp
Yeah, Arthur Erickson!!! Lead the charge, revolt against continuing ed!!
i love canada
When Jacques Herzog was teaching here at Cornell in the 80s, he would go to bars around ithaca, get totally shitty and get into fights on a rather regular basis. In fact, he's been banned-for-life from most local bars here.
don't know if these were starchitects, or if this is "bad behavior," but SOM partners bruce graham (sears tower, inland steel) and walter netsch (air force academy, uic, inland steel) disliked each other so much that they maintained separate offices -- in separate buildings -- across the street from each other (walt apparently got inland steel, bruce was in 33 west monroe). supposedly they still haven't said two words to each other for more than 40 years
architectural author James Steele plays mind games with his thesis students... always the half-assed complement, also is the wishy washy sort to boot. But the big one about him is that his wife divorced him for cheating on her with his students (!), and took him for everything he had, including all his previous book royalties. Now when he assigns his own books for a class he even jokes, "It's not like I'm getting anything for it".
Also apparently Kate Diamond had a REALLY hard time fitting in with the other kiddies in high school, and even switched high schools several times because of it. This came out in a crit of a high school project in which the school had to be broken down into small learning communities (LASD's new fad regulation) and she really went off about what a terrible environment that would be for people like her. All the students just kind of stood there with raised eyebrows thinking, "hmm, a bit too personal, that."
we can always make up stories abou teachers we had that we hate actually...i mean, theres no way to confirm any of this stories that the ppl is sharing (and i didnt insinuated Zaha was a man, just thought of the bathrooms at the AA studio buildings which normally are mixed)
i like collect these stories because they bolster my philosophy that the only difference between the stars and the "lesser lights" of similar experience and talent is hubris and self-promotion
there was a long-standing rumor at UT that michael benedikt single-handedly caused the extinction of a rare species of south african tree by specifying it in one of his houses in florida, but i actually really liked him when i had him...and he didn't "practice" anyway, so the story is a bit farfetched, now, isn't it?
Ok kids....A Danny L Story:
As the story goes, one of my professors attended Cranbrook and the alustrious Danny Libeskind was sitting in as a juror...
My professor was presenting his project and after he had been speaking for like 5 min or something, Libeskind interrupts him, walks toward his presentation materials and removes them from the wall and places his drawings on the floor.
Libeskind then walks back to his chair, sits down and utters a few words under his breath and then, with much bravado says "Your work is Shit"...
My professor, enraged, proceeds pin his materials back up and Libeskind attemps to prevent him from doing so...
Here is where the story get's a bit dodgey: Word on the street is that my professor punches Libeskind and then accidentially cuts his in a large paper cutter moments after he decked Libeskind....
What is confirmed however, is that charges were filed that day against my professor and the Bloomfield Hills police were called.....
If there are any Cranbrook alum's out there from the late 70's through early 80's who could comment on this, I'd love to get the details...
Or, if anyone else has bitch slapped this guy, I'd like to know about it.
Mariano- yeah, I guess we all could. But my two examples would be confirmed if you know the right people. And if you don't believe some of the stories here, consider them rumors. Whatever floats your boat.
and rumors are often way more entertaining than the truth, which prolly a lot of these stories aren't
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